The BBC Slimes Bush

A reader forwarded to us a press release touting a “documentary” which will air on BBC’s Newsnight on Thursday:

WATCH OUT WASHINGTON!!! HERE COMES GREG PALAST’S POLITICALLY EXPLOSIVE NEW DOCUMENTARY FOR BBC’S SPECIAL EDITION OF NEWSNIGHT ‘IRAQ – ONE YEAR LATER’ AIRING WORLDWIDE (EXCEPT USA) MARCH 18
Did the Bush Administration’s secret plan to grab Iraq’s assets and oil delay elections and keep our troops under fire?
This never-before-seen BBC documentary is based upon confidential State Department information that reveals the covert plans made prior to the occupation. Palast shows how the Bush Administration planned to divide up Iraq’s assets, including oil…through secret documents and private interviews with General Jay Garner, a fired chief of the occupation, the ‘Civilian Provisional Authority,’ Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch DC, a lobbyist insider … plus Congressman Henry Waxman on war profiteering by Bush cronies. Thursday, March 18th BBC Television Newsnight.

Wow. What a lineup. Jay Garner, who was fired; Tom Fitton, who presumably will talk about Judicial Watch’s current vendetta against Halliburton, and not his views on Bill Clinton; and Henry Waxman–now there’s a reliable source!
The funny thing about the administration’s “secret plans” is that they never seem to come to fruition. It’s now been nearly a year since the war, and if the administration intended to “grab Iraq’s assets and oil,” don’t you suppose we’d have seen some sign of it by now? As far as I can tell, President Bush intends to hand over control to the provisional Iraqi government around mid-year, just as he has said for a long time, and then stand meekly by as the Iraqis do whatever they want with their “assets and oil.” Curses, foiled again!
As for the maker of this “documentary,” Greg Palast, he is a nut. To take just one example, here are excerpts from his comments on the capture of Saddam Hussein, from his website:

Former Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein was taken into custody yesterday at approximately 8:30pm Baghdad time. Various television executives, White House spin doctors and propaganda experts at the Pentagon are at this time wrestling with the question of whether to claim PFC Jessica Lynch seized the ex-potentate or that Saddam surrendered after close hand-to-hand combat with current Iraqi strongman Paul Bremer III.
Ex-President Hussein himself told US military interrogators that he had surfaced after hearing of the appointment of his long-time associate James Baker III to settle Iraq’s debts. “Hey, my homeboy Jim owes me big time,” Mr. Hussein stated. He asserted that Baker and the prior Bush regime, “owe me my back pay. After all I did for these guys you’d think they’d have the decency to pay up.”
The Iraqi dictator then went on to list the “hits” he conducted on behalf of the Baker-Bush administrations, ending with the invasion of Kuwait in 1990, authorized by the former US secretary of state Baker.
In Baghdad today, the US-installed replacement for Saddam, Paul Bremer, appeared to acknowledge his predecessor Saddam’s prior work for the US State Department when he told Iraqis, “For decades, you suffered at the hands of this cruel man. For decades, Saddam Hussein divided you and threatened an attack on your neighbors.”
While lauding the capture of Mr. Hussein, experts caution that the War on Terror is far from over, noting that Osama bin Laden, James Baker and George W. Bush remain at large.

The BBC was once, I believe, a respected news source. Now they are hiring wackos to make bogus “documentaries” starring Henry Waxman. A sad come-down.